MARTIANUS CAPELLA writes:

And eternal be their memory–the liberal arts colleges died long ago. Within most of those colleges which dub themselves “liberal arts colleges,” not a single administrator or professor knows what the liberal arts are nor why they ever were. The liberal arts curriculum was designed by theologians of the Middle Ages to train the “free” (liberal) man in the pursuit of knowledge in grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. When I attended a “small, prestigious liberal arts college” at the start of the 1980’s, none of my classmates received a liberal arts education, rather, each learned a trade–in fact, each received an illiberal arts education, one pursued for economic purposes. I, too, learned a trade: physics. I studied no history except The History of Science. 

When my brother applied to liberal arts universities in 1984, he faced an Orwellian scene, which he took in stride at the time, although in retrospect we see how it arose. He was a straight-A student in a large suburban high school, valedictorian of his class, with perfect scores on his SAT exams and near-perfect scores on all of his AP exams; he ran cross-country, track, and played soccer, played the piano and guitar, composed music and poetry, and performed in the musicals, served as head altar boy, participated on the It’s Academic team and debating team, was class treasurer and was voted “most likely to succeed,” and had a host of other accomplishments. He was not accepted into the East Coast Ivy-League schools to which he applied; only now do we recognize that those “liberal arts universities” did not want another smart, suburban East Coast white male engineering student. 

With the advent of platoons of Traditionalist Catholic and Orthodox homeschoolers, there may be a resurgence of desire for true colleges of the Liberal Arts: Those which prepare a young mind for a lifetime of study and properly ordered thought. One true college of the liberal arts of which I am aware is St. Thomas Aquinas College in California. There is a single curriculum for all students in this undergraduate wonderland. This classical college does not permit students to have a major; rather, during their four years, the students learn how to read the great books of Western literature (studying grammar, logic, and rhetoric with the great philosophers and theologians and learning arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy from the great mathematicians and scientists.) 

The liberal arts college is dead. Long live the liberal arts college!

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